Punditchick

Election Day: Iraq

Despite all the gloomy prognostications, the Iraqi elections went quite well. The swagger is back in Neocon circles, the media--save Fox News-- are despondent and the deadenders of the anti-Bush Left are seething-- they were counting on Tet and they got happy Iraqis flashing their blue fingers instead. What a downer!

The Democratic Underground --the Far Left's panic room-- was the site unhappy liberals went to vent. The incomprehensibly malignant kookery of the DU posters didn't go unnoticed by TKS and Instapundit.

Other takes:

Chris Matthews is a subversive cunt.

John Kerry's Meet the Press appearance was awful and self destructive. The guys at PowerLine were all over it.

Geraldo Rivera owned Judgment Day in Iraq. Unlike the Brian Williams of the world, Raldo was totally down for Iraqi freedom. He thought the Iraqis were like Rocky -- I love that Raldo was all "Gonna Fly Now" while everybody else in the media was hoping for another Tet.

Oh and I love this Sully post:

AN IDEA:
A reader suggests the following as a spontaneous people-power act of solidarity with the voters in Iraq:    

You have a pretty decent megaphone, I've got an idea for you and the rest of the blogosphere. Why not ask people to wear blue marker on their index fingers this week, as a sign of solidarity and a tip of the hat to the courage of the Iraqis today?

Nice thought.

I like the idea of pudgy, preppy rightwingers-- think Jonah Goldberg and David Frum-- schlepping around heavily blue enclaves (like Georgetown and Wolcott's Manhattan) with blue "We are all Iraqis now" ink on their fingers. That's delicious-- the Wolcott-Moore-Kerry Left simply couldn't tolerate that. 

Jim Wolcott  isn't coping  too well with the Bushies post-electoral bliss. Ha!

I'm waiting for the first Lefty to declare the Blue Ink Revolution a Rovian dirty trick. The Democrats are out of power in Washington-- all they had was the color blue and their anger. Now the Iraqis and Bush and Rove have "hijacked" the color blue. Sweet.

About Air America

AA is 24 hours of shrill, mostly unlistenable liberal talk. Al Franken's show is opposite Limbaugh and O'Reilly in much of the country and it gets beat badly by Limbaugh in even heavily blue cities. It's easy to see why. Franken is a manifestly unfunny guy. The money guys who launched AA are nuts if they think Franken is the franchise guy to build a winning team around.

Ed Schultz, a former "Righty", follows Franken in the lineup and is probably the most successful talker on AA. But Schultz isn't likely to be able to move opinion like Limbaugh does. Limbaugh's worldview, like it or not, is coherent. Schultz's politics are hermaphroditic. He loves SUVs, hunting, fishing, guns and NARAL and way Left pols like Barbara Boxer and Hillary (Feminazis to the average belching everyguy in the Heartland)-- it just doesn't  follow.

I don't see how the vegan, gun-hating base of the Democrat party could ever be wooed by Schultz. He's the Wesley Clarke of talk radio. He's a Lefty come lately who isn't at all sure why he's a Democrat. Schultz's bumper music playlist is as confused as he is. Clapton's "Layla", Jennifer Paige's "Crush" and Mandy Moore's "Candy" all make Big Eddie's song list. Maybe it makes me an ass for saying so, but an old, husky guy listening to Mandy Moore's "Candy" (a disposable song made during Mandy's tween years) is pervy. I think Ed would be a lot less creepy if he just played CCR and the Dead like everyone else on AA.

The Morning Sedition is a show hosted by two pretty unmemorable dudes who are only worth listening to when they go wall to wall Rove. To the Left, Rove is Bush's brain, Nixon and Richard Mellon Scaife rolled into one. Jim Moore, the guy behind Bush's Brain, is the most hi-larious anti-Rove operator amongst the liberal commentariat. I hope he becomes to AA what Newt Gingrich is to the Sean Hannity show. I want more Jim Moore.

Much to my chagrin, Rhandi Rhodes is unawesomely bad. She is dreadful, but unfunny. The AA bigs would be wise to get rid of her and give Jim Moore his own show.

Garafalo's "Majority Report"  (an inaptly named show given the election returns) is the AA show I like the best. Garafalo and her co-host Seder are horrible talk show hosts-- Garafalo should probably get rid of Seder-- but their guests are fantastic. I got into MR when Seder was on his honeymoon--Thank God-- it's not worth listening to since he came back. When Seder was on vacation, Garafalo had nutsy guest hosts. One guest host blamed the conspicuous Christianity displayed by players during the College football bowl games for creating Republicans. He especially thought the players on the  undefeated Auburn Tigers (a team from that deep red Deep South state of Alabama) were too flamboyantly Christian and that they would turn passive viewers into GOP- voting Christers. And they make fun of Falwell....

Most of the MR guests are OCs  --original Communists. The other night a CPUSA type described the crowd in Washington for Bush's Inauguration as overwhelmingly anti-Bush. Needless to say, he was using Pravda math. God, I love unchecked kookery.

Michael Savage-- a kook to be sure-- and Laura Ingraham are the best talkers on radio right now. Savage's Swiss America spots are more compelling than 90 percent of AA's programming.

Despite moments of awesome badness, AA isn't even as listenable as Limbaugh whose excessive time on golf courses has made him increasingly ponderous. All in all, AA is pretty much the Ishtar of talk radio. 

It was Just Ok

Noonan "reluctantly disliked" Gerson's speech and thought Lott-- a wickedly imperfect party planner-- chose lame tunes. Peter Robinson- another Reaganite- thought Bush's speech was more LBJ-ish than Reagan-like...Ouch!! On the other hand, Hugh Hewitt-- a man seemingly after G. Gordon Liddy's heart-- loved it..

Why They Lost?

The Left has been wondering why they lost the election. I think there are many reasons why they lost, but one reason that hasn't gotten much pub is the spectacle of their self discrediting mendacity. Lefty pundits lay all the corporate scandals at Bush's feet. The Left's public position is that the yucky corporate malfeasance began on 20 January 2001 and that the Clinton boom years were pure years-- a time of good corporate governance thanks to Bill's oversight.

Newsweek's Charles Gasparino's new book "Blood on the Street"  demythologizes Clinton's go-go economy.  And Arthur Leavitt, Clinton's SEC Chairman and Carlyle biggie, is no good guy in Gasparino's book. Leavitt is another guy who's lucky to be a Democrat.

Wonkette Is Bad on TV and other observations

Tina Brown's CNBC show is getting more watchable-- that's not exactly saying much, but I do watch it. The last segment panels are generally good. Jumbo Jim Wolcott is a good, but infrequent panelist. Stanley Crouch is my favorite-- he's the only one of Tina's sofa talkers who comes off like a human being. Blogging diva Wonkette, aka Ana Marie Cox, is the worst panelist of all time. She comes off like a depthless Valley Girl. Moderately funny girl/occasional panelist Jessi Klein-- the rich man's Sarah Silverman-- has much more gravitas than AMC.

Jim Cramer-- Larry Kudlow's spasticated sidekick-- was on Tina's panel last night and he embodied why I think Baby Boomers in groups of two or more function much like terror cells. Jimmy Cramer is the typical Leave-No-Fad-Behind Boomer--thus, he is an iPod listening fool. Jimmy used his tween daughter's iPod so much, she was forced to buy him a pair of Oakley MP3 sunglasses "for Christmas" (huh?). And what does our Jimmy listen to in his MP3? Tony Bennett? Nah! Jeff Airplane? Nope! He rocks out to Eminem's "Toy Soldiers"!!!!! 

Jimmy Cramer doesn't sleep with the fishes. Who says we're not a tolerant country?

It Won't Mean Nuthin

It seems Clintonista Larry Summers is no feminist after all.

This gaffe isn't going to count for much. It'll be chalked up to Larry having a bad day-- the PC policepersons will all be out for doughnuts. But if this gaffe had been perpetrated by a former official from the Bush I or Reagan White House, the touchy, podium hogs of the PC Left would make it mean so much. It would be proof that the Republican administration that the former official served was the sexist, racist, dinosaur-staffed regime that the Left always said it was. Larry is lucky he's a Democrat.

The Pornification of America

I am no Jan LaRue, but Hardee's "Fist Girl" ad is foul.

The Inaugural Ball Busters

The No Fun Right is doing its best to take the party out of the Grand Old Party.

I think its unwise for the GOP to give an unhipster like Jan LaRue, a dance-banning town elder from the movie Footloose if I've ever seen one, veto power over the Inauguration.

Sullivan's Soft War

Sullivan doesn't get the war. He has illusions that this war can be fought inoffensively.

Sullivan has great empathy for Ali the Syrian who MP Granger got rough with at Abu Ghraib. I don't.

Ali the Syrian went to Iraq on a jihadist mission to kill Americans, Brits, Kurds and any Iraqis interested in helping create a democratic Iraq. He shouldn't be Mirandized and the Geneva Conventions don't apply to him-- if Sullivan doesn't get that by now, he wants us to fight a war we can't win.

Whitewash at Black Rock

The Thornburgh-Boccardi report on Rathergate is finally out. The Pajamahadeen reacts: Ratherbiased,   Hugh Hewitt, TKS, Powerline, Captain Quarters.

From Drudge:

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX MON JAN 10, 2005 20:03:45 ET XXXXX

RATHER STAYS HOME; EXECUTIVES SPLIT; MOONVES LOOKS TOWARDS FUTURE

*Exclusive**

CBSNEWS veteran Don Hewitt called Dan Rather's disappearance from Monday's Evening News "really stupid" during a damage control meeting on Monday, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

One top source inside the CBS Broadcast Center claimed Rather was told to stay off the air on Monday, as a form of punishment, while the "Report of the Independent Review Panel" was being released!

A Rather intimate strongly denies Rather was told to stay off the air. "He is jet-lagged [from asia]," the source said late Monday. But the source quickly added, "It was not the worst day to sit out."

Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer was called in to anchor the damaged ship.

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CBS staffers were shocked Monday when CBS president Les Moonves suddenly tied Rather's upcoming resignation to the phony document flap, a departure from CBS's official storyline.

Moonves explained in a memo: "Dan Rather has already apologized for the segment and taken responsibility for his part in the broadcast. He voluntarily moved to set a date to step down from the CBS EVENING NEWS in March of 2005... after examining the report and thinking about its implications, we believe any further action would not be appropriate."

In the emotional speech to the CBS newsroom first announcing his resignation last November, Rather was very clear to co-workers that his departure from the evening news was not because of the Bush story.

"No matter what you hear elsewhere, this was a mutual decision," Rather explained. "The timing has to do with wanting to separate the decision to leave the anchor chair from the 60 MINUTES report."

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